Jessica and Heather have done a lot of work with the Blogroll New World Order. This new Sexy Blogroll can be implemented in various ways. Go to OMSH and read about how to do it. I love all the different ways Heather said it could be implemented, but there a few widgets that can do this too. Just not in the same way. I am writing this post because I thought putting it all in her comment section would be a bit too much. I will go over to OMSH when I am done writing this and leave it in the comment section. I plan to implement one of the ways they suggest, but there are a few other ways using widgets that you can do this. These suggestions will only work for WordPress individuals. But they are easy ways to do this if you don’t know how to change your layout or you just don’t want to take the time. I have put them in my sidebars so you can see them in action. I do not intend to leave them there for a long time, but I do want you to see how they work. I will take the layout plan OMSH used to give a quick few words about each of them. First, let me stress that these are WordPress widgets. Sorry I do not know about other platforms. But a search might find you something very similar that will work for you. Or you could just switch to the best platform ever and use WordPress. :)
Each of the widgets has the same exact six pics with links (all to various pages in my blog). I was in a bigger hurry than I should have been, but I really wanted to get this up this morning. So the pics are resized and not that great looking and I used my own blog for speed.
Option 5 (continued from OMSH)
You see the Quote Rotator Plugin Widget by Luke Howell on the right.
This was designed to rotate quotes originally, but it will accept simple html as well. So I entered a basic img src code surrounded by the link code and voila! I had my first entry for rotation.
SPECS
Cost: Free
Requirements: Must have a WordPress blog. I do not know about wordpress.com blogs and uploading widgets and plugins.
Advantages: You can completely control this from your admin interface-adding, editing, and deleting as you wish. You can store the images on your server or at flickr and call them any way you would any other img src. (Don’t hotlink, that’s not nice.) The widget allows you to set the Title, Delay, Fade Time and Font size (if you are using text). It also allows you to choose whether or not you want the list to be showed randomly or not (in order of entry before it starts over). The page does not have to be refreshed to see the next item on the list, if you like that sort of thing.
Major Advantage (that I see): This particular widget may only allow for one instance, but it offers the easiest editing of all.
Disadvantages: The page does not have to be refreshed to see the next item on the list, if you do no like that sort of thing. Also, It will only show one at a time if you want to show multiples this is not for you.
Option 6
The first and third widgets on the left are from the same widget source: AdRotator by Kpumuk. It is based on the Text Widget by Automatic than comes bundled with your WordPress install. Here is what he has to say himself about it:
Like the Text widget, but it will take several chunks of HTML text separated with . In each page request new chunk will be displayed. Up to 9 instances of this widget may exist.
So the first widget on the left has six pics/links (same as the first) and they are rotating one at a time with each page load. The third widget on the left has the same six pics/links as the other two and are rotation three at a time on each page load. How many rotate with each page load depends on where you place the more tag.
SPECS
Cost: Free
Requirements: Must have a WordPress blog. I do not know about wordpress.com blogs and uploading widgets and plugins.
Advantages: Only refreshes with each page load if that is what you want. You can have up to nine instances of this widget if you want to separate out the type of blogrolls you have; for example, My Reads, Reciprocal Links, Craft Blogs, etc. Or you can have just one. Also this widget can be edited and maintained in the Admin section under Presentation where your Widgets are.
Disadvantages: If you are going to be editing it a lot then it can be a bit tedious as you have to sift through all the link and src codes in the widget popup screen, but if you are going to set it and forget it then it will do fine.
I am sure that each blogger will have their own take on these options’ advantages and disadvantages based on what the blogger wants and needs. I by no means want to take over anything that Jessica and Heather are doing. I had a friend e-mail me asking me about this and an easier way for her to do this and if I could help. And as I was searching I began thinking about these options for the few others who made need them. I do hope that this was helpful to some.
Now for my casting call: If you are a reader and want to be in my blogroll then let me know in the comment section please. While I won’t require it, I would love to be in your blogroll too.
Update and more info can be found on this post.
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